Show goes on at Riverside drive-in

I don't own a time machine, but I found one nearby that was easy to use and cheap.

The Van Buren Drive-In movie theater in Riverside reminded my father of his teenage years, while I had a chance to see what it was like to watch a movie before the multiplex or digital streaming.

The Van Buren opened in 1964 with just one screen. It now has three screens, each showing two movies every night. For $7 per person, moviegoers can park their car for the night, set up chairs and blankets and grab some theater snacks for a movie at 8:30 p.m. Here's another blast from the past: your entry fee gets you a second movie at 10:30 p.m.

My family and I went to the Van Buren on a Monday night in August. Right off the 91 freeway, it was easy to find and the line to get in was minimal. Though the theater recommends you get there an hour before your film, we arrived with 30 minutes to spare and found a spot with ease.

After being directed to our screen, we backed the car into a parking spot, put the seats down in the back, got out the folding chairs and set up our boom box. The Van Buren uses a radio station to project the audio. To avoid ending the night with a dead car battery, we borrowed a family friend's boom box with radio capability to use for the night.

Promptly at 8:30, “Turbo” began. With numerous other cars projecting their radios in the parking lot, it sounded like a modern surround sound system. We were sitting outside on a cool, starry night, seeing planes fly overhead to the local airport and trains roar by on the nearby track.

Not that I need to be convinced, but it was easy to understand the romanticism of drive-ins. I could see why a teenager with a new set of wheels in the 1940s and '50s would have brought a girl to the drive-in to impress her for a romantic night out. Maybe they would even see a shooting star.

Drive-ins started in the 1930s when car culture and movie culture began to boom in a Depression-ridden county. The first drive-in theater opened near Camden, N.J., in the summer of 1933, and was originally known as a park-in theater. Entrepreneur and auto parts salesman Richard Hollingshead believed customers would come to watch movies in the comfort and privacy of their cars.

The patent he obtained was overturned in 1949, and soon after drive-ins took over the movie-watching industry in the United States, with the boom peaking at 4,000 theaters in 1958.

Hollingshead's intentions for the drive-in theater experience still can be seen at the Van Buren today.

“You are in the privacy of your own car,” said Fred Williams, owner of the Van Buren since 1969. “You can talk if you want, you can smoke a cigarette or bring your food from outside. We prefer you buy it here, but we don't care if you bring it in. You don't have to put up with other people talking or going in and out of your row or cellphones going off. People can control light, heat and so forth.”

My dad could lean over to tell me it was Ryan Reynolds who did the voice of Turbo. My sister could ask my mom for more popcorn. And I could comfortably sit in the back of the car with a blanket and my feet up, with no one else around.

Williams started working for Deanza Development, the company that owns the Van Buren, in 1961 as a college job.

“I just got into it part time in college and it just kind of stuck,” he said.

Despite the prevalence of indoor theaters, the Van Buren is doing well and has hit capacity almost every weekend night so far this summer.

“We are more or less a novelty, now more than ever before,” Williams said. “There are a lot of people who have never been to a drive-in and there are a lot of people going for the first time. Land values continue to rise and we take up quite a bit of land.”

If it were a purely financial question, the Van Buren might not survive.

“The value of land outstrips how much you can make on drive-in,” Williams said about the future of drive-ins.

Williams is among the luckier operators of the less than 400 drive-in theaters left in the U.S. He already has made the switch to digital projection used on modern films. It can cost $80,000 to buy a digital projector, and many owners operating on thin profits are expected to shut down rather than invest in new equipment.

Though the 21st century has seen countless technological and social changes since the 1950s and '60s, Williams emphasized that not much has changed with drive-ins since he started in the business.

“We have superior sound because of the radio and digital projection,” he said.

Drive-ins used to be an icon of American culture. They now stand as a symbol of the American past. But Williams says he has found a niche in his community and thinks he will have customers for years to come.

“Young couples can come and bring a baby, don't need to get babysitters, kids are a dollar a head,” he said.

If I find myself in Riverside on a nice summer evening, I know one customer he can count on.